Caress (11 page)

“Including your father?”

She wouldn’t back down. “
Including
my father, Mr. Harrison.”

Michael sat back. “I understand, Nya. May I call you Nya? No juicy tidbits. By the way call me Michael, Mike, or whatever you want. I thought I mentioned that the other night, but it’s okay. I think we’re definitely at a place to use first names now. You know, I think I like you.”

Nya stared back at him, trying to fuel her outrage, but had a hard time of it. Their conversation had been lightning fast but… in a way… kind of exhilarating. Plus, he was baiting her, but he didn’t seem to be doing so with malicious intent. Plus, with him smiling like that, all she could think about was the fact that he had the straightest, whitest teeth she had ever seen set in such smooth dark skin! She couldn’t look away from his smile and Lord, those eyes. When her reverie was suddenly interrupted by a sharp rap on her door, she inwardly sighed with relief. “Come in.” Nya exhaled, unaware of having held her breath.

Lysette peeked around the door. “Um, Nya?” Nya raised her brow and looked at her friend. She wasn’t ready to forgive her for sending Harrison in when Nya had expressly told her not to. “Nya,” Lysette repeated. “Nyron’s on line two.”

Again, Nya began to tap her pencil on the desk with one hand and rub her neck with the other. “Did you tell him I was in a meeting?”

“Well, that’s why he called. He doesn’t want to talk to you. He wants to talk to Michael.” Lysette began to chew her thumbnail, and Nya tapped her pencil even harder. Michael watched her and waited, still with that seductive grin.

Nya broke the lead in the pencil.

“Listen, Lysette,” Nya pointed her blunted pencil at the secretary. “Listen carefully, because you’ve had a slight problem with listening today. You tell Daddy—” Nya glanced at Michael for a second, then stood and walked over to the door where Lysette stood. “You tell Daddy,” she whispered, “that Michael and I just left. We’re touring the gallery and having a late lunch. You tell him that I won’t be back in the office today.”

“What if I
want
to talk to him?” Michael asked with a mischievous smirk.

“You don’t,” Nya returned.

Lysette looked a bit stunned, eyes wide and mouth agape.

Quickly regaining composure, Lysette mouthed the words, “She’s not always like this,” in Michael’s direction and walked out.

Nya returned to her desk and glanced at the picture that had been on the wall of her office since before she moved in. Her father had left it there when he moved his office back to the islands. It was one of her father and her taken when she was eight years old. He was holding her up with one arm with the fish she’d caught in the other. She remembered how he took her fishing rod, baited it, and helped her toss the line even though she kept telling him she wanted to do it herself. She remembered him setting her aside and pulling the fish in for her. No matter how much she told him she knew how, he couldn’t bring himself to let her do it by herself.

“Nya,” Michael called softly, breaking her from the memory.

She looked up at him abruptly, returning to the present. “You were saying?”

“I was saying since you told your father that we were going to tour the gallery and have a late lunch, that we should do exactly that. After all, I’ve missed an opportunity to talk to the great Nyron Seymour himself. I want compensation,” he teased, giving her a winning smile.

“Fine,” she said tiredly, no fight and no reciprocating smile. “We can take the company car. I’ll be back in a minute. Just wait out front.”

h

Michael didn’t like the sadness he’d seen in Nya. Everything he’d read said that she and her father were very close, but there was obviously some serious tension between the two of them. He wondered what had caused it. What he did know was that her father had preempted her attempt to gain the retraction, and he had seemed quite pushy earlier when he demanded to speak to Mike on the phone. Nya had lived with her father her whole life. She had to know the man. So why now was there so much conflict? Could it really be because Nyron was making her fight for the presidency? And if so, why would her father do that?

He was in deep thought as he entered the lobby. Then he immediately noticed Lysette Hendricks smiling broader than he had imagined her small mouth could. He glanced at his watch and figured he had a few minutes before Nya arrived with the car. “Hey, Lysette,” he said, leaning on her desk.

“Yes, Michael?” she asked.

“You mind telling me something?”

“Her favorite color is green. She likes R&B, jazz, and of course island rhythms. Adores getting flowers, though she says she doesn’t. Keeps entirely too much to herself. Anything else?”

Michael’s laughter reverberated through the room. “That’s not at all what I wanted to know, but it’s a start. I’m really interested in the dynamic between Nya and her father.”

Lysette raised an eyebrow suspiciously, “Nya and Nyron? Hmm. What exactly do you want to know?”

“Well, for starters, why is Nya avoiding her father? Aren’t they close? That’s what I hear.”

“They are, really.” She motioned for him to move closer to her desk. “Listen, I don’t know if I should talk to you about any of this.”

“Hey, you can trust me. I don’t want to hurt Nya or this company. All I want is some answers. You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to.”

She leaned in even closer to him, peeking around him to make sure that she and Michael were alone. “Nya will kill me for telling you this, if she doesn’t kill me for letting you go back there when she clearly wanted me to send you away. The whole problem revolves around one thing: Nyron is retiring in the fall, though it isn’t official yet. He hasn’t decided who’s going to replace him when he retires.”

“So you’re confirming that Seymour is retiring?”

“Do
not
go all reporter on me now when I’ve just started to like you.”

“Sorry.”

“I think everyone knows anyway, but I’m not confirming anything. All I’m saying is that his replacement has not been named.”

“Isn’t Nya going to take over after him? That’s the logical decision.”

“Spoken like a man who’s never met Nyron Seymour. He’s a business wiz, but logical he ain’t, not when it comes to her. Everybody knows Nya’s the one for the job, but he’s given her a hard time ever since she began working for the company. He’s been looking over her shoulder from day one. It doesn’t seem like he trusts her to do a good job even though she’s been killing herself the past couple of years just to prove to him that she can. That woman is more than worthy of following in his footsteps. The man’s a fool if you ask me. Don’t get me wrong.” She threw her hand up for emphasis. “I love him like a father and I owe him a lot, but what he’s doing just isn’t fair.”

Michael rubbed his chin. His admiration for Lysette’s loyalty and clear affection for her friend Nya was increasing by the minute. “Maybe he just doesn’t want anyone to think he favors her.”

“Trust me, nobody thinks that. I think it’s because she’s a woman, though Nyron would never admit it.”

“Well, he doesn’t have a son to pass it on to.”

“Not exactly,” she hedged. Before Michael could ask her what that meant, he saw Nya pull up in front of the building.

“Do you think you could meet me later at Mel’s? To talk?” That “not exactly” had been entirely too mysterious for him to pass up.

Lysette bit down on her lip in serious consideration, then slowly shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. I’m sure you mean well, but Nya is my oldest friend in the world and I wouldn’t want to do anything to hurt her, and that includes telling you things she’d rather you didn’t know.”

Michael sighed and nodded his head in concession. You had to respect a friend’s loyalty. He walked out to see Nya sitting in the driver’s seat of a silver luxury sedan. It was such an unexpectedly inviting vision that he almost tripped on the steps.

h

Amazingly enough, the tour didn’t stress her as much as she had first anticipated. She attributed that to the fact that she was now in her real element, the Hatsheput Galleries complex. Here, she felt secure and comfortable. Maybe she could also attribute the pleasant afternoon to the fact that Michael had been so interested in the art, the complex, and, though she hesitated to admit it,
her
. He watched and listened carefully, only interrupting with quick questions about an artist or a particular work. She decided that a silent Michael Harrison, with his smooth, dark skin and captivating brown eyes, was a very appealing Michael Harrison, even though the sincere way he paid attention to her every word and every movement was somewhat disconcerting. The man was just so
present
as he leaned in close to listen.

Near the end of their tour, they arrived at a pair of multicolored glass doors fashioned into a mosaic of brilliant colored light. A gift from a long-time family friend from the islands, Marc DeSant, the doors were his homage to an island legend. “These are actually an exhibit,” Nya explained. “According to legend, a very vain and very arrogant Danish priest was on the island years and years ago and he wanted to build a church. He wanted his church to be built on a cliff with windows and doors of stained glass, so that when the sun was high in the sky, the entire church would be lit with all the colors of God’s rainbow. The frame of the church took no time to build, and it stood for a year like a holy skeleton on the cliff. When the windows arrived, he and his flock went to work right away assembling the church. Once it was complete, everyone marveled at the structure. Unfortunately, a storm was brewing. His church stood for seven days before the island was struck by a massive hurricane.”

“And the church was destroyed?”

“Yes. But in all of the sheared wood and shattered glass, the door frame and the glass doors attached to it remained. The doors were completely intact, and they were wide open. The priest took those open doors as a sign. God’s world was bountiful and miraculous and welcoming to those who would but walk through the doors to Him. It is said that the doors ended up in the Papal City, but no one really knows.”

“That’s a beautiful story,” he said and, for a moment, their eyes held. Nya’s belly fluttered and she had a little trouble breathing.

She swallowed. “Yes.” Nya really wanted him to appreciate the effort to which Hatsheput went to make this place a recreation of the Islands through the imagination of each artist. It was a place that embodied the art and the Caribbean in and of itself. She wanted him to admire the dream that she had worked so hard to make real.

When she opened the doors, golden sunlight flooded the room. She walked on but noticed that Michael had hesitated in the doorway. She smiled to herself; it never failed. Everyone responded to the garden that way. It was really the crowning glory of the gallery. Nya had envisioned it as an actual, living part of the islands within her gallery. Her father had thought it impossible when she commissioned it. With a team of landscapers, floral designers, and architects, however, she designed the huge garden to be constructed in what was effectively a greenhouse attached to the gallery. It did not resemble a greenhouse, though. Instead it resembled a wild, tropical landscape with its jagged paths and wildflowers.

“Have we stepped into another world?” Michael whispered.

Nya nodded and looked up at him. “Do you feel the breeze?”

Michael nodded. He’d thought it was his imagination.

“It’s a complicated venting system. I don’t understand. But it feels and smells just like a sea breeze, doesn’t it?” Michael nodded again, enthusiastically. “Oh, I know what you should see!” She turned onto another path. In minutes they stood before a large fountain shaped like a looming mountain with verdurous foliage greedily overrunning it down to the surrounding pool. Nya reached into her pocket and threw in a coin but refused to wish for anything; that would be silly.

They were surrounded by fragrant, colorful, flowers and Michael reached out to touch a small one with delicate pinkish red petals reaching upward. He recalled seeing a similar one outside his villa window in St. Thomas.

“That is called frangipani,” Nya said, stroking a petal tenderly. “And this, this is ginger thomas.” She leaned to sniff a dainty blossom. Her look was far away, as though she were thinking of home.

“Nya, I have to tell you. I’m completely overwhelmed and awed by the sheer beauty and possibility of a place like this. I live only four blocks away, and this is unbelievable. For months, I intended to get out here, but I always got caught up in the art and never really had the time to venture beyond the gallery. I am so grateful I finally got a chance to see it, experience it. All I can say is thank you.…”

“I just showed you—”

“Ms. Seymour, please take the compliment.”

Nya felt a shy smile emerge. “I’m not always good at that.”

“I can tell.”

“So you do like my garden?’ she said, looking up at him through thick lashes.

His expression was at once heated and reverent. “Yes, I do.”

Nya blushed.

She lowered her head and led him around the fountain to a dais with brochures placed neatly on top. Michael picked one up. On the front was a picture of the Hattie Andersen print hanging on his living room wall.